This invention relates to a basket for an orbital washer of the type described in U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 39,406, filed May 15, 1979 by John Bochan, assigned to the instant assignee, and incorporated herein by reference thereto. Baskets designed for an orbital washer are described in my prior U.S. Pat. applications Ser. No. 98,226, filed 11/28/79 and Ser. No. 107,495, filed 12/26/79, each assigned to the instant assignee, and each incorporated herein by reference thereto.
An orbital washer as described in the above-cited U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 39,406, employs a drive system, such as an eccentric gear drive system, which moves the basket in a particular generally horizontal orbital motion during its clothes washing and rinsing cycles. During the spin cycle, the basket is centered and rotated rapidly to remove excess water from the clothes.
As described in the above-cited U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 98,226, motion of clothes inside a basket being driven in an orbital path, is caused by interaction of the clothes with the basket bottom and side wall. With a circular basket having a bottom sloping generally upwardly from the outer cylindrical wall toward the center post, clothes tend to move in a helical path continuously about the circumference of the basket. Energy transferred from the basket to the clothes by interaction of the clothes with the interior surfaces of the basket produces turbulent motion of the clothes, which washes the clothes. The shapes of the interior surfaces of the basket which contact the clothes determine the pattern of motion of the clothes within the basket during orbiting thereof. The above-cited U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 98,226 describes an unsymmetrical basket design to achieve turbulence and mixing of the clothes by moving them in opposite senses within the basket. The above-cited U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 107,495 describes a basket configuration which produces a tendency to generate opposed motion in separate portions of the basket to enhance mixing and turbulence of clothes within the basket during the orbital cycles of the machine.